Hate Coffee, Love Chocolate

I am a coffee hater ..I know, I know, don't judge me. I skip over chocolate cake recipes immediately that call for coffee, but people say you really can't taste the coffee. Has any other coffee hater tried a chocolate cake recipe with coffee in it an NOT been able to taste the coffee? I don't want to waste my time if it's going to taste coffee-ish in any way!

My best, darkest, chocolate cake recipe is one of the coffee added recipes (similar to the Hershey's one). I have fed it to coffee haters (you are not alone) and not one has ever noticed a coffee flavor, and most have come back for seconds and/or asked for it specifically for their occasions. I use a good quality instant and add the granules (one tablespoon) to the dry ingredients, and use hot water where the recipe calls for coffee. I do think if one used a poor quality coffee it would probably leave an undefined bitter undertaste. You probably wouldn't recognize it as a coffee flavor, but the cake would taste "off". A good bet would be to find out what brand of coffee is most popular with people in your area and use that.

you absolutely can't tell there is coffee in there. It really does deepen the taste of the chocolate. Try it--only you can be the judge of your own palette. The Starbucks VIA packets (pick medium roast) are an easy way to get a quality cup of coffee withouth the trouble of brewing.

I am a coffee HATER (can't even stand the smell of it) as well, but found that I do like the chocolate cakes that have coffee in them. But, I have started using choffy in place of the coffee in the chocolate cake recipes that call for coffee. Choffy is a brewed chocolate drink made from roasted and ground cacao beans. It adds the same depths of flavor that adding coffee does, but you don't ever have to worry about that one time you end up adding to much coffee and making that a very dominate flavor. Choffy offers different blends of cacao beans from different areas of the world, so you just like chocolate bars you can change the flavor complexity depending on which blend/area you choose. You can learn about choffy on their website which is: www.drinkchoffy.com

I used the mochaccino to replace the milk (but not the buttermilk) in my white white reverse creamed cake (a totally neutral flavor canvass when you leave out the almond extract), then I added 1/2 Tablespoon of instant coffee and 1 Tablespoon of hot chocolate mix. The result was fandamntastic with a mocha buttercream (also made with instant coffee and hot chocolate mix.

I did the same with the vanilla chai (used the egg yolks from the white cake plus two whole eggs instead of just whites and again replaced the milk with the soy beverage) and added 2.5 tsp cinnamon, 1tsp cardamom, 1 tsp ginger, 1/2 tsp allspice, and 1/4 tsp ground black pepper. I found it a bit eggy when fresh, but a couple days in the freezer fixed that. Again, it was a hit, especially with the coffee hater in our group. I offered it as a dessert with plain whipped cream. I haven't paired it with a buttercream flavor yet, but I'm thinking caramel.

Each recipe yields three eight inch layers which rise just above a two inch pan and always perfectly level.

No, you can't taste the coffee in the final cake. I use espresso powder which I added to hot water, let it sit for a minute or two. Pass it through a fine sieve and use it in the recipes. Brilliant!

I wondered about straining it. Since I am a non-coffee drinker, I don't know diddley about it! The instant coffee wouldn't need to be strained though, right? The hot water dissolves it all, or are there little clumps left?

I prefer recipes that use cocoa mixed with boiling water and cooled. That seems to bring out all possible cocoa flavour. If it needs to be even deeper, I just add some grated chocolate at the end (no adjustments to recipe).

Is espresso stronger than regular coffee? How much do you usually use in a recipe? Sorry for all the questions!

I use exactly what the recipe calls for. It's not necessarily stronger than regular coffee, unless it's being compared to a bad quality, watery coffee but I do make mine in a percolator rather than an espresso machine so it's not as concentrated...it has water mixed in with it (via the percolator).

AYou don't have to sieve it if using instant coffee. Mine is the kind that goes into coffee filters if you were to drink it. So I sieve it throught those japanese tea bags. I use a tablespoon of espresso to a cup and 2 tablespoons of water for every cup of coffee the recipe calls for.